Red meat linked with cognitive decline and dementia, study reveals

Having bacon and sausage for breakfast may be quite appetizing, but these are not really good options for your health, especially if you plan to have a healthy brain. A new study has found that people who eat more red meat, especially processed red meat like bacon, sausage, and bologna, are more likely to have a higher risk of cognitive decline and dementia when compared to those who don’t.

“Red meat is high in saturated fat and has been shown in previous studies to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, which are both linked to reduced brain health. Our study found processed red meat may increase the risk of cognitive decline and dementia, but the good news is that it also found that replacing it with healthier alternatives, like nuts, fish, and poultry, may reduce a person’s risk,” study author Dong Wang, MD, ScD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said in a release.
To investigate the impact of red meat on brain health, researchers examined a group of 133,771 individuals with an average age of 49, who did not have dementia. These participants were monitored for up to 43 years, during which 11,173 of them developed dementia. The participants were asked to keep a food diary and examine it every two to four years, listing what they ate and how often.
The study is published in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The researchers defined processed red meat as bacon, hot dogs, sausages, salami, bologna, and other processed meat products. They defined unprocessed red meat as beef, pork, lamb, and hamburger. A serving of red meat is three ounces, about the size of a deck of cards. They calculated how much red meat participants ate on average per day.
They divided the participants into three groups, for the processed red mean. The people in the low group category ate an average of fewer than 0.10 servings per day, while the medium group consumed between 0.10 and 0.24 servings per day, and the high group ate 0.25 or more servings per day.
Further evaluation based on factors such as age, sex, and other risk factors for cognitive decline, researchers found that the high group had a 13% higher risk of developing dementia compared to the low group.
In the case of unprocessed red meat, the researchers compared people who ate an average of less than one half serving per day to people who ate one or more servings per day and found no difference in dementia risk.
The researchers also found that participants who ate one or more servings of unprocessed red meat per day had a 16% higher risk of subjective cognitive decline compared to people who ate less than a half serving per day. They also found that eating more processed red meat was associated with faster brain aging in global cognition at 1.61 years with each additional serving per day and in verbal memory at 1.69 years with each additional serving per day.

Replacing one serving of processed red meat with one serving of nuts and legumes per day is linked with a 19% lower risk of dementia and 1.37 fewer years of cognitive aging. When the substitution for fish, there was a 28% lower risk of dementia, and replacing it with chicken is linked with a 16% lower risk of dementia.

“Reducing how much red meat a person eats and replacing it with other protein sources and plant-based options could be included in dietary guidelines to promote cognitive health. More research is needed to assess our findings in more diverse groups,” Wang added.